Intellectualism in the digital age is not dead — it is curated. It has been plucked from the dusty halls of academia, stripped of its rigor, and draped in silk and candlelight, arranged like a still life to be consumed in passing. No longer is knowledge an act of pursuit; it is a mood, a performance, a well-lit corner of your apartment where a copy of The Brothers Karamazov sits unread, spine unbroken, waiting for its close-up.
Gone are the days when intellectualism meant long nights hunched over difficult texts, the slow, painful crawl of genuine comprehension. Today, it is a whisper of Kafka in the wind, a fleeting Instagram story captioned ‘You are free, and that is why you are lost’. It is the careful annotation of a single passage in Crime and Punishment — not for reflection, but for the aesthetic poetry of a pencil-drawn underline. It is the ever-present pomegranate, cracked open on a mahogany table, its glistening seeds an ancient symbol of Persephone, of hunger, of indulgence, of an entire generation’s desire to be perceived as knowing rather than to know.
It is a black-and-white photo of a hand holding a cigarette over Being and Time, the smoke curling upward like the ghost of Heidegger himself, bearing witness to a person who will never make it past the introduction. It is the Pinterest boards filled with dimly lit libraries and tweed blazers, bookshelves curated like art installations rather than places of study. It is the TikTok account that claims you are not like other girls because you listen to Chopin in the rain and stare longingly out of train windows, your sadness suddenly imbued with literary significance because someone on the internet told you it was tragic in the way The Bell Jar is tragic.
And where the pursuit of intellectualism has become performative on the stage of our digital profiles, buzzwords such as “-core” and “- academia” become machines which dictate our identity in the real world. Micro-trends and niche aesthetics splatter oil and gas through gritted teeth, staining our perspective of self-worth and, in turn, obstructing our views of others. Elitism is bound in the way we make judgements about others — we become material, critical, and unkind.
We hear tales of our elders who grew up peacefully without the distractions of social media and truly lived in the present. Their backyards were their universe of discovery, their streets and the path to their individuality were infinite. Without buzzwords and microtrends shifting the culture every few months, they could carry the past into the present and future.
Existing in the current age of flourishing digital culture and depleting economic and political systems is challenging. For years, our homes were a prison, our development restricted to the confines of four walls, and the only pathway out into the world was through a glowing screen. A beacon of hope and opportunity and endless possibilities in the palm of their hands. The pandemic was truly an era of escapism, so it is only inevitable for young people to have come out the other end with a crippling loss of self and a sense of dependency on the community they built online.
However, our outward appearance has become the sole testament of the self, and all else is determined by the aesthetic we allocate ourselves to. We curate our sense of self based on the ‘vibe’ we most resonate with, or desire to omit. It influences our shopping carts, the contents of our playlists, the books we read, the friends we make and ultimately, the discourse and information we interact with. With the convenience of the algorithm, the very media we consume is articulated to mirror our desires. But in the process of being all-consumed in what we aspire to be, are we losing our true selves?
The internet has given rise to a new kind of scholar: one who does not seek wisdom, but the appearance of it. They are fluent in the language of deep thoughts and fleeting melancholies. They will tell you that they love Kafka, though what they love is the idea of loving Kafka. They understand Sisyphus, but only through Camus in translation, and only insofar as it can be condensed into a TikTok sound bite about rolling the same boulder up the same hill in a world that rewards the illusion of effort. They have not read The Iliad, but they will post an out-of-context excerpt — I would recognise you in another life — as though Homer himself wrote it for the romantics of 2025.
This is not to say that aestheticising knowledge is inherently wrong. There is a kind of magic in romanticising learning, in making it feel cinematic, in giving it a poetic sense of self. The problem is that the performance has replaced the substance entirely. Reading has become a passive act, a set piece in a larger theatrical production. The question is no longer What does this book mean? But What does it say about me that I own it?
We live in an era where a well-placed Kafka quote is worth more than an understanding of his existential dread, where a carefully staged photo of The Picture of Dorian Gray holds more social currency than having grappled with Wilde’s commentary on vanity and corruption. Where a bookshelf filled with unread classics is a flex, because what matters is not their content but their presence. Aesthetic intellectualism is not about engaging with difficult ideas—it is about draping yourself in the illusion of their weight. It is about seeming, and in a world where perception is reality, that is often enough.
Compelled from the impressionable age of adolescence, our generation grew up under an unseen pressure to conform to a self-determined standard. This conditioned us to endure social and cultural norms by retreating to an identity pre-determined by our algorithms. As a result, these very norms are manifested into our everyday interactions, our curated identities influencing our everyday environments within our communities, our workplaces and most prominently, on campus.
And the digital stage rewards it. The real readers, the real thinkers, are left in the shadows, buried under the algorithm, while those who perform the vibe of intelligence are propelled to the forefront. The modern intellectual is not a scholar but an actor, playing the role of someone who reads, someone who knows, someone who understands.
It is time we revitalise current cultural trends, rather than limit our authenticity within the bounds of our chosen ‘vibe’. It is okay to read popular romance novels and dress alternatively. It is okay to be an Arts student and not enjoy War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Or a Health sciences student with a passion for ‘80s neo-wave culture.
Instead, we must collect fragments of inspiration from an array of ‘aesthetics’, communities and interests, and channel them towards your own, unique sense of individuality. You are not a plain glass panel, you are a constellation, a mosaic of all the things that make you, you.
So, should we throw a party? Should we invite Dakota Warren? Of course. But let’s be honest — half the people in the room will be there for the aesthetic. The other half will be there to say they were.
